Lightning
by idioticonion
Summary: Robin Scherbatsky: Killer for hire. AU, set around 5.13 Jenkins. Dark and smutty.


**Lightning**

The key dips slowly into the gel pot and is turned once, removed and slid carefully into the lock. The tip of Robin's fingers glisten in the dim light as she twist the key with a barely-audible click.

The door swings open.

With cat-like grace, she slips inside the apartment and pushes the door closed. She stands, almost silently, each breath long and even, and becomes one with the darkness.

Suddenly, there's a noise, from outside the apartment. A group of people have just stepped out of the elevator and are talking and laughing, obnoxious and loud. It's only her years of experience that prevent Robin from flinching.

Instead, she makes a decision, reacts, and pads quickly and quietly across the living room towards the bedroom. She knows her way instinctively, because this place, this apartment, is well known to her.

She uses the inside knowledge to her advantage.

This isn't how she would have planned for this to go down. There's too much noise, too much risk of him waking. Plus, people standing outside the apartment might hear something, even with a silencer.

Luckily, she sees the rise of his body in bed. He's still sound asleep. Without hesitation, she raises the gun and fires three shots. Two in the head, one in the chest. The comforter muffles the sound nicely, so there's a just-audible thump-thump-thump as she squeezes off the rounds.

She approaches the bed. There's a haze of dust and the stench of burned feathers in the air. She quickly whips back the comforter to confirm the kill, when light floods the room behind her.

Lightning fast, she whips around towards the bathroom, and is hit in the chest, all the air punched out of her lungs as she goes down hard, pain spiking through her, again and again. She's twitching even in mid-air.

Robin lands on her back, convulsing, her tongue lolling between her lips. She can't think or speak, she's completely disorientated.

Then suddenly her body goes limp. She lies there for a beat, stripped of her power, her limbs no longer her own, and tries to open her eyes. When they manage to focus she finds herself looking up into the face of the man who, by rights, should be dead in his own bed right now.

Leaning over her, silhouetted by the light and holding a taser gun, is Barney Stinson.

*--*--*

She's boneless as he pulls the two electrodes from her chest and lifts her onto the bed. Robin attempts to lash out at him, but her limbs flail uselessly in the air, then thump against the mattress. She can feel him pant, feel a puff of breath on her cheek as he fumbles for her arms and wrenches them above her head, cuffing both wrists tight to the headboard. The metal bands dig in and she grunts in pain.

The room is still mostly in darkness, lit only by the bathroom light, but she can see him clearly, standing, holding a gun, her own weapon raised against her. His hands are shaking. He's not used to this, she knows. Everything he says, those hints he drops about his job, it's all just bullshit. He's not a physical guy; well, not in that way. He's brain, not brawn, and that's what makes him so dangerous. That's what made him her target.

She's just assuming. Robin's not made privy to that kind of info. It's not necessary for this kind of job.

And Barney's dangerous brain should be Swiss cheese right now, while her bank account, coincidentally also Swiss, should be two million dollars richer.

Fear radiates from him. His eyes are wide with shock and he swallows convulsively. But he keeps his hand steady and he says "I should kill you."

Robin rolls her eyes, affects boredom, and replies. "Aren't you gonna ask me why?"

He shakes his head, just once, teeth pressing into his bottom lip. "You're an assassin."

She's surprised. She'd expected denial, and she's almost impressed at his intuition. But still, she can't help but needle him. "Nah, this is revenge. For breaking up with me. You broke my heart, Barney."

He snorts at that. "Ah, yeah right. You broke up with me, Scherbatsky."

"It was mutual!" She protests, mock-outraged.

He laughs, but it's a thin sound. After a pause he says, "So this is about work?"

She raises an eyebrow. "No, it's a sex game, gone wrong. Al-though!" She drawls, her eyes sweeping over him. He's dressed in a t-shirt and boxers and she's cuffed to the bed. Surely even he will see the irony in that.

She can see he's thinking about it.

"Tell me what this is about," he demands, bobbing the muzzle of the gun a couple of times.

"No," she says firmly. He can kill her now. It's not like she's afraid of death. It's not like she feels… anything much. Not for years, not since she fell from the stage at a Robin Sparkles gig and hit her head.

The service recruited her a year later, made her into what she is now. A sociopath with a useful expertise with most weapons know to man. And some weapons only known to women.

"No," she repeats, huskily. She widens her eyes and pouts. "Make me."

The handcuffs are too tight to easily escape from. She needs Barney nearer so she can free herself and get to him. The gun isn't the only weapon in her possession.

He approaches the bed, and he's got that look in his eyes that she knows so well. Despite everything, a smirk pulls at his lips. "Oh, I can make you."

For a second, for an instant, she steels herself. It's not like they didn't train her to resist torture. But no-one likes pain. Well, you know, not like that, eh?

Barney climbs onto the bed, straddling her, and fingers the zipper at her throat. The metal teeth rasp as he slowly pulls down, the cloth falling open from neck to navel, exposing bare skin. She hears him draw in a sharp breath, one hand travelling over her stomach in a lazy arc. His fingers flutter against the skin, before moving again, gently cupping one breast and flicking at her nipple.

He's still holding her gun.

Robin Scherbatsky may not have felt a single emotion since her seventeenth birthday, but her body responds to Barney Stinson in a way that requires not one tiny shred of empathy.

She groans, low and sensual.

Encouraged, he yanks the zipper down further. He looks her in the eye, while checking the gun and pulling out the cartridge, discarding the remaining bullets. Then his slips the cold metal barrel down between her legs, nudging over her pubic mound and stretching the lace of her panties.

When it finds her clit, Robin's spine curves, arching her body right off the bed.

Torture they prepared her for, even rape. But being sexually abused with her own gun by her ex-boyfriend and friend of five years?

Not so much.

Robin doesn't swear, doesn't curse him, not at first. He shifts the gun, in short, light movements at first, pressing it between her folds, and building up the friction until she's writhing, gasping, pleasure warming through her, making her skin flush, making her want more.

He stops. He leaves her pulsing. Desire floods through her body - sharpening her senses. She tries to grind against him, but he moves back an inch every time she does.

"Why did you try to kill me?" He asks.

"Barney, please!" Maybe if she begs him, he'll slip up, give her the opening she needs? But what she _needs_ right now if for him to move that fucking gun again.

He chuckles, the pig, and rubs the barrel against her clit, harder. She convulses, crying out in pain/pleasure, left hanging, humping the air as he repeats the question.

"They never told me!" She moans, the truth bursting from her before she manages to clamp her lips shut. It's not that she thinks that she owes him anything. It's just that he's got a gun between her legs and he's fucking her with it.

It's kind of distracting her from thinking straight.

Rain hammers against his bedroom window and there's a distant roll of thunder. It's like a weird punctuation mark, distracting them both for a second. She recovers before he does and grins up at him. "Come on, Barney. What do you want from me?"

He starts to move his hand again and she's slick now, her thigh muscles strain against his legs as she tries to open them. She moans, throws her head back in sexual abandon, all the while trying to encourage him to let her spread her legs.

He takes the bait. The horny idiot takes the bait. There's really no irony that his libido is his downfall.

He shifts his weight, allows her legs to encircle him, then yanks at the material of her jumpsuit, tearing it in his eagerness to go down on her. "Who are _they_?" He asks, his lips moving right over the hard, aching pearl of her clit. She grits her teeth, fighting her own desire to come.

Her thighs clamp down around his neck, under his jaw, around the back of his skull, and she squeezes him tight until he goes limp.

She aches, she aches so badly, she wants nothing more than to jerk herself off against his face, his mouth, his freaking _nose,_ even! But she steels herself to wrench his head around and break his neck.

Then she hears a whirring noise, coming from the headboard. An electrical hum.

Fuck.

Fuckity fuck.

Barney Stinson has a sex camera. He has many, all over the apartment. And she'll bet his sweet life that he's got something with night-vision.

She slowly releases the pressure and he slumps down onto the mattress between her legs.

*--*--*

Lightning cracks the sky and illuminates the bedroom, waking him up. Their roles are nicely reversed. Barney's cuffed to the bed and Robin's standing over him, knife in hand.

He groans, his mouth opening and closing a few times, his eyelids fluttering open.

"You're going to tell me how to switch off the cameras and destroy the hard-drives," she says calmly. "Or I'm going to cut out your penis and your balls and feed them too you."

"Rob-" he croaks. For a moment, she sees the distress cloud his blue eyes, sees the betrayal. She wishes she could understand it. But any emotions, love, hate, they are all a mystery to her now. That's why she can't hold down a relationship for any length of time. After a few months, it gets harder to fake it with someone you see all the time, someone you sleep with.

Plus, the assassin gig becomes harder to hide.

"You-" he says, and it's almost sweet.

She arranges her face in a smile and says, "You owe me an orgasm."

He shakes his head and tries again, his expression contorted with pain when he tries to speak. "You t-"

Robin laughs. "Yes Barney, I tried to kill you, remember."

There's a flare of anger in his eyes. She's pretty sure he's telepathically calling her a bitch. But she never has been good at reading other people's minds.

He tries again, forcing out the words this time.

"Youtube."

"What?" She says, genuinely confused.

"The video feed is posted automatically on Youtube." He swallows convulsively. "Ted and Marshall get an automatic update. Only the first five minutes, but that's enough to show you getting your freak on with the... attempted murder bit."

She looks down at him incredulously. "You're disgusting."

He laughs. "Disgustingly awesome?"

Robin shakes her head and smiles. "You wanna make a deal, Stinson?"

He shrugs, which is pretty impressive since he's the one cuffed to the bed. "I guess? If you don't try to kill me?"

She tilts her head and studies him, her hand crawling down over his taut, muscular torso. "Can't promise I won't try and blow your mind right now. Just maybe not using a gun."

She feels his dick leap against her thigh. "Dirty boy," she breathes.

"Oh yeah," he grunts. "This is way hot."

"One more for the road?" she breathes, as she wriggles out of her torn jumpsuit.

When she sinks back down on him, she doesn't think about her failure, or the danger she's in, or even the danger she's put him in by sparing his life. With Barney Stinson inside her, in that moment, she kind-of thinks she can take on the world. With his brains and her brawn, they'd be unstoppable.

Just so long as they can get past his whole thing of being in love with her. But hey, maybe she can use that to her advantage after all?


End file.
